Show Me by Abigail Strom

After years of dealing with a heart condition and an overprotective mother, Airin Delaney is finally having her first taste of freedom in Waikiki—and it’s intoxicating. But it’s nothing compared to the out-of-this-world attraction between her and astronaut Hunter Bryce. Airin is determined to shoot for the stars and experience her first real kiss.

All Hunter has ever wanted is to explore the universe. That is, until a certain black-haired, wide-eyed beauty shakes him to the core. Hunter knows almost nothing about Airin, not even her last name. All he knows is that she’s the kind of girl he could fall over-the-moon in love with. Unfortunately, the timing couldn’t be worse. While Airin is celebrating her first night of freedom, Hunter is celebrating his last—before embarking on an eight-month mission.

It was only supposed to be one night. But sometimes that’s all fate needs to change two lives forever.

Unlike its predecessor, ‘Show Me’ is written in a very different vein—much more than just an astronaut looking to fulfil his lifelong dream beyond Earth’s atmosphere and a woman so sheltered that the whole world seems new. If ‘Tell Me’ is an opposites-attract story, ‘Show Me’ continues this trend in a different way. Unlike Caleb and Jane who are inherently different in their personalities and what they wanted out of life, Hunter and Airin are opposites in in their experiences though there’s the ironic twist of the latter having much to teach the former as well.

There was something whimsical and lofty about ‘Show Me’—I essentially thought this read like a dreamer’s book with lots of hopes that pour through the pages—where talk extended beyond present reality to interstellar travel and the inevitable rush of philosophising that comes with it. The undertones were great: the ideals of humanity vs. the pragmatism needed about reality as we know it, the long-debatable merits of space exploration, the politics that comes with it.

I wasn’t entirely thrilled though, with the extremes in Airin’s and Hunter’s experiences; too often it comes across in many books as the manwhore and the virgin trope and the inevitable comparisons of how special a heroine is in contrast to his countless other flings. And I was even less enthused about a meddling mother whose protective desperation turned so manipulative that it caused most of the rift and the push-pull dynamics in the story.

It’s not easy to rate this story nonetheless. Strom’s writing was enjoyable and there were parts that I could relate to, just as there were bits that I couldn’t, like Airin’s wide-eyed honest cataloguing of every new thing. Hunter’s and Airin’s HFN ending was given that same dreamy tinge, though the look into the future remained just that—a veiled hope that still left me wondering if this was a pairing that could weather the storms.